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Thursday, May 10, 2012

HUNTING

On
Jeremiah’s seventh Thanksgiving, his father took him deer hunting for the first
time.In the cool, damp morning, Jeremiah
trembled, from the weight of the gun, from fear he would miss. His father’s
warm breath of coffee and cigarettes, his grown-up smell of sweat, steadied
him. Behind them, his brother Martin shivered under a camo blanket. Almost
eleven years older than Jeremiah, Martin was a pacifist—he had never killed a
deer, much less a rabbit—but their father made him go hunting anyway. “Got to
make men of all my sons,” he had said.

Jeremiah
looked through the scope, blurred from dew, and as the buck came into focus,
his shaking stopped. Jeremiah wanted this kill, bad. More than anything he
wanted to show his father, his brothers, he was a man. He wanted those antlers
over his bed. He wanted to give the hide to Luke. He wanted to sit down to
backstrap seared on coals, sliced thin, the meat pink on the plate, and he
wanted his mother to say, “Thank you, youngest son, for our food,” while Martin
looked down at the table.

The
deer lifted his head, his tail a white flag.

“There
son,” his father whispered. “Aim for the shoulder. Aim high.”

A thin metallic taste flooded Jeremiah’s
mouth. His finger curled around the trigger. Dear God, thank you for letting me
take this life. He felt the recoil before he realized the bullet had connected.
The deer leapt into the brush, then staggered in a circle and collapsed on wet
leaves.

Almost
a mile above the Korengal valley, Jeremiah and Rickards holed up in the
abandoned hide and waited for the insurgents to return. AK47 casings and goat
turds littered the dirt floor of the stone hut. They had packed enough MREs,
ammo, and water for a week but hoped for a shorter stay.

Days, they patrolled
the Pakistan side of the ridge. By noon, when it got too hot, they dozed on the
cool ground in the hut. Despite being deep in enemy territory, they did not
find evidence of the enemy. The only humans they saw were the goatherds in the
meadow of the neighboring ridge. Every morning the boys herded their goats from
the village up to the meadow, and every evening they brought them back to the village
pens. Nights, Jeremiah guarded while Rickards slept hard curled on the ground.
Rickards could sleep anywhere, any time. Jeremiah never slept more than
an hour at a time.

“I
used to be an insomniac,” he had told Jeremiah the first night in the hut.
“Iraq cured me of that.”

“That’s
why you re-upped?” Jeremiah asked.

“Yep,”
Rickards said. “War makes me sleep like a baby.”

On
day three, Rickards radioed down to base that Intel had been wrong, very wrong;
the ridge was quiet as a mausoleum. At dusk, Rickards pissed in the holly
bushes and lay down in the hard dirt. Jeremiah perched in the rocky outcropping
and waited for night to fall. While Rickards slept, Jeremiah watched the goatherds
and their animals return to the valley, the lights of the homes and their base
below wink out, and wrote letters to Sheila in his head. Far up the northern
valley, low booms and flashes of mortars and missiles, Camp Vegas taking fire
from the Taliban.

The
moon traveled across the sky and when it was directly overhead, the faint
tinkle of bells alerted him. He peered through his rifle scope. Along the path
he and Rickards had taken up to the hut, a lone goatherd walked slowly, as if
deep in thought, seven goats bunched around him. Every now and then the
goatherd paused, his tunic dragging in the dirt, and there was something about
the goatherd that made Jeremiah feel even lonelier.

Rickards
woke with a scream.

“Lousy
nightmare,” he said but did not elaborate. Hands shaking, he squatted next to
Jeremiah and lit a cigarette. Smoke curled around his head. Ashes flickered at
his feet.

“G-Man,”
he said to Jeremiah, pointing with his rifle at the goatherd. “There.”

“Same
kid who passes through every night,” Jeremiah said.

“At
21 hundred? This one’s a Muj. Gotta be, with the caftan and all that shit.”

Jeremiah
raised his M4 and looked through the scope. The person walked three or four
steps, then stooped, touched the ground. Dust floated around his hand. Then,
the goatherd stood again and walked, his goats following. A coil of silver
glinted in his hand.

“Laying
wire,” Rickards said. “Fucking punk. You should have nailed him last night.”

The
goatherd stopped and turned. He stared up at the mountain as if he could see
Jeremiah and Rickards and their M4s leveled at him.

“Good
enough for rules of engagement, good enough for me,” Rickards said. “You get
the honors, G-Man. Besides, you’re still a kill virgin.”

Jeremiah
fingered the trigger and squinted through the scope. It seemed he heard his
father’s voice whisper, “Aim high.”

“Shoot,”
Rickards said.

Jeremiah
lowered the rifle. The goatherd started again towards the village.

“Do
it, damn it.”

Jeremiah
did not remember pulling the trigger. The man fell to the ground, a puddle of
white. The goats scattered, bleating.

“Nice,”
Rickards said.

“Thank
you,” Jeremiah whispered, not sure who he was thanking.

***

Two scenes from THE HUNTER, a story from my work-in-progress THE MINISTER'S WIFE, a novel of linked stories. Funny where a character might take you. I have never been to South Dakota, nor to Afghanistan, yet both places live so vividly in me as I write Jeremiah Anselm's story. Peace...

11 comments:

I was thinking, WHERE on earth does Linda come up with these scenes, painted with such a realistic brush that I could fairly touch the soldiers and hear the father's advice... and then you say even you are surprised where the characters take you. I can hardly wait to get The Minister's Wife on my Kindle.

A nerve on fire...

Where I Hang

About Me...

By day, I'm an uptight and proper academic - you know, a publish or perish type who resides in tall towers with the likes of Rapunzul. In the evening, I morph into a lovable mom and wife, play with my children, hang with the hubby.
But when darkness falls and the house stills, I write.